So What
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk said: “What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity’s basic fears: the fear of being left outside, the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears.” I don’t know from whom is Pamuk, but he reminds me of something our seminary’s Ethics prof once said, more or less: Good fiction rather than textbooks is where one finds a better understanding of ethics.
The gospel is probably as much about fear as it is about love. It reminds us that perfect love casts out fear. Fear is not one among many emotions. Rather is fear the wall-to-wall carpet that underlies emotions. Anxiety is fear of the future. Anger is fear in the present, the attempt to regain the balance one loses from anxiety. Guilt is fear of what I have done — real or imagined which can be just as real as real. Resentment is fear of what others have done to me — likewise. Resentment and guilt are among the larger bugaboos for recovering addicts. Love encompasses all these dimensions that Pamuk insists literature must assuage.
Church is the place to take our fears, to share and to hear the narratives that encompass and inform them. In church, we immerse ourselves in our family history and learn how our peers, past and present, dealt with their fears, their awe before the awesomeness of God. Life is that story, their stories, our stories, our awe.
Miles Davis played a tune called “So What,” a sort of in-your-face melody with a neat bass line plus only two chords that ring changes on mediaeval church modes. Seems logical if ironical that this may be one that he plays with his back to the audience. So here’s to fear and love and all that jazz. Peace.